Download Designing a Dead-Reckoning Positioning System

Alan Ghelberg
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To implement a dead reckoning system, I first arrived at the idea of using
acceleration and compass data as inputs to a micro-controller, where I would perform the
positioning calculations. After some exploration, it soon became apparent that due to the
double integration, error would build up too rapidly, resulting in an unusable system.
From there, I looked for a method that would not suffer this same problem, and came to
the idea of replacing the accelerometer with an odometer, thereby acquiring distance
directly. This proved to work much better, and in fact was very successful. My test runs
resulted in errors of roughly 5% over a 40-meter travel distance.
This methods section of this report will look at how I implemented both of these
dead reckoning systems, in terms of both hardware and software. The results section will
present how I tested the system, and an analysis of the results. The discussion, will
investigate possible uses for the system and as well as such issues as manufacturability.